


Afterwards - Episode 9 - The Ferryman

by Windjammers



Series: Afterwards [9]
Category: Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 16:53:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18595483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windjammers/pseuds/Windjammers
Summary: The team learns that Dread is commencing with Project New Order. The first step, Project Charon, is designed to create hundreds of new biodreads with human minds, and Jon is determined to stop Dread no matter what the cost. But what happened afterwards?





	Afterwards - Episode 9 - The Ferryman

_Disclaimer: The following is a work of fan fiction based on the television series,Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. It is not intended to infringe on the copyrights of Landmark Entertainment Corporation or anyone else who may have legal rights to the characters and settings. I don't own the characters. However, I am putting them into an adventure since the show was cancelled and the writers/producers/directors/actors can’t put them into any new adventures._

~*~*~*~*~

There was always a price to pay.

Jon didn't know who levied the price. Whether it was fate, karma, the universe, dumb luck, chance, intelligent being -- no one got something for nothing in the grand scheme of things. Even in mythology, no one got to the underworld unless they paid Charon a coin to ferry them across the River Styx.

The problem was that sometimes, the price to be paid was far greater than anyone ever imagined or was willing to pay.

Today, Charon had collected a lot of coins. Even the team had almost paid the ultimate price. If it meant stopping Dread, any one of them would have all gladly given their lives by crashing into Volcania. Hawk once called it the rational transaction-- one life for thousands. In this case, it would have been five lives given willingly for tens of thousands.

Even so, a single biodread was born despite all they did to stop the project.

When Hawk said that they had lost the engines and was laying in a course for Volcania, Jon could imagine what was happening on the jumpship. From his relative safety in the bi-plane, he envisioned Hawk frantically keeping the ship on an even keel. He could see Jennifer working feverishly, fighting the odds to get the afterburners reconnected and reconfigured to fly them out with only a minute until impact. He could hear Scout counting off the seconds, keeping track of their altitude and speed. He could see Tank working support for everyone, his presence always steady and calm.

Then there was Jon, flying cover in the bi-plane, unable to do more than hope that at the end of that minute, he and his friends wouldn't be lying dead and broken at the bottom of a destroyed fortress. Jennifer... his guts twisted up when he thought of her on that ship, crashing into Volcania. He'd go with her-- with all of them. He'd run cover all the way if that happened. He had forced the thought out of his mind. He had to concentrate on flying and keeping up with the jumpship.

Once again, they all escaped but the jumpship was the one that was damaged. With the engines burned out, the jumpship limped home with only the afterburners operating. It had been a harrowing, exhausting flight. The afterburners hadn't been built for sustained flight. The jumpship wasn't designed to withstand that kind of prolonged but sporadic velocity.

_"Pilot?" Jon called over the radio."Status?"_

_A moment passed before Hawk answered. "She's busy trying to keep us in the air. Do not link back up with us, Jonathan. It's everything Jennifer can do to keep this bird flying. She doesn't need the added weight. Afterburners are erratic -- the ship's fighting her!"_

_"What can I do?"_

_Tank's voice came over the radio. "Keep an eye out for Soaron. The sensors are burned out as well."_

_"Stupid biobird," Jennifer's grumble brought a smile to Jon's face. "It damaged my ship again! I just fixed the last hole he shot in the hull!"_

_"We'll help with the repairs," Scout told her. "Looks like we'll be grounded for a while."_

_The ship lurched, the afterburners blasted out another burst of flames. The ship started to go down, then the nose jerked up._

_Jon listened intently. He could hear Jennifer and Matt talking over the roar of the engines._

Jennifer's voice sounded strained, as if she were lifting a great weight. "We may have to sacrifice altitude for speed if this keeps up."

_"What'll happen if we slow down?"_

_"We'll crash. We have to maintain a certain speed or the afterburners will overheat. That'll burn a hole right through to the turbines and when they try to generate more power so we can get back up to speed, they'll explode. The ship's not equipped to take that kind of damage and keep flying. If that happens, we're going down no matter what."_

_"Can you keep the speed up?"_

_"Up? Maybe. Constant? No. We may have to go into a dive to regain speed. If that happens, you guys are going to have to bail out on the sky bikes to lighten the load. If the turbines burn out, I may have to bring her down in a forced landing."_

_Bail out? Forced landing? Alone? That ship wasn't designed for survivable forced landings on no engines. The best they could do was controlled crashes and that required two pilots at the helm. Jon did not like that idea at all. It meant that Jennifer was willing to go down with her ship while saving everyone else. No ship was worth her life... their lives._

_"Hawk? What's going on?"_

_There was a long silence, and every horrific scenario flashed through his mind. He heard Jennifer almost groan in protest as the ship lurched and pitched. "Come on, come on, you can do this," he heard her say to the ship. "Just catch the updraft..."_

_The ship leveled out, its speed becoming steadier. He could almost see Jennifer pat the console as he heard her say, "Good girl."_

_Finally, Hawk's voice, stressed from the effort he was expending to help Jennifer keep the ship in the air, answered. "It's looking better, Jon. We'll make it. It's just going to be a long bumpy ride home."_

He could hear the tension in their voices and all he could do was watch helplessly. The ship didn't fight Jennifer when she was at the controls. How many times had Jon seen the ship fly longer and faster, sometimes as if it were working with Jennifer to save their lives? The jumpship didn't have a brain, it wasn't a living creature, but there were times when Jon could have sworn that it flew twice as well for Jennifer-- maybe out of gratitude because she loved that ship and took care of it. The ship wouldn't let them crash, not with Jennifer flying it.

It. The jumpship was sometimes just that to him-- an "it." Other times, the jumpship was a "she." The more time passed, the more Jon could see a bit of a personality to the ship. Hawk would laugh, say that they were all beginning to treat the ship like people had treated their automobiles decades earlier, but what was the harm? They knew the jumpship wasn't alive.

He made a mental note not to say that around Jennifer when she was amusing Hawk by talking to the ship.

Living machines. Cyborgs. Biodreads. Machines weren't just machines anymore. Some were like the jumpship and Mentor , machines they would risk a lot to protect and sustain. Others were the opposite. They weren't there to help humans make their lives easier. They now existed to dominate and exterminate human life.

That brought up more questions. When a human mind transferred into a metalloid body, did that change the person's outlook on humans? Did the person retain any of their humanity or did they become mere metal entities, shadows of their former selves? Dread had started the transfers with Project Charon. The biodread was proof of that. As far as they knew, Soaron was only a machine with a mechanized processor. This new one was something else entirely. This biodread had a human mind.

Someone had given up their humanity to become a biodread.

How could anyone do that willingly?

Jennifer had taught them some of the litanies and speeches that the Dread Youth learned. When youth leaders graduated to overunits, a special ceremony was held for the graduates. Dread's speech was the same each time. Rousing words, animated speech, Dread would galvanize the new overunits to a frenzied enthusiasm.

Jon could almost hear Dread speaking the words.

_"The old world dies, and with it the old ways._

The old world wasn't just 'dying.' It was being slowly choked and killed by a mechanical monster. At times, it felt like the world was still on life support, no matter how many people were trying to save it.

_We will re-make it as it should be - must be!_

Should be? Must be? There wasn't anything wrong with the old world. Nature took care of itself, paying people no mind yet providing them with life-giving oxygen and clean water to drink. She made the green fields to run in and nighttime skies full of stars to gaze at. Dread wasn't making the world into what it should be or must be. He was ripping out its heart and changing it into his warped view of mechanical perfection. No humans, no life, no love, no heart, no soul. The world would just be the unthinking precision of gears, cogs, programs and sub-routines.

_Immortal, mechanized...human minds in gleaming, undying metalloid bodies._

Why would anyone want to be encased in a metalloid body? Even if it meant living forever, what was immortality without the things and people you loved there with you? Metalloid bodies didn't ever take deep breaths of clean, mountain air. They never drank clear, sparkling spring water. They never ate... anything. Simple pleasures would never be known again.

Dread must not have learned the old saying that the only problem with being immortal is that you have to live forever. Everything that you wanted to be immortal for would change or die out. Then again, maybe that was something Dread had heard. He wanted to change the world so nothing would change ever again, nothing would die out, and all the things he wanted to be immortal for would be around forever. 

_Give me your blood, your trust, your minds, and we shall build a new tomorrow! A new future! A NEW ORDER!"_

The only future Jon was interested in was the one that didn't have a Lord Dread in it. Yet, how could anyone fight the litanies' messages? They were ingrained in every Dread Youth even before they understood the meanings of the words. Trust him, be willing to die for him, let him put your mind in a tin can -- Dread knew how to weave a sentence. He joined himself to his troops and them to him. What was that one litany Jennifer had told them? Something about Dread being their eyes and their being his fists? He couldn't remember the exact wording, but a lot of the sayings all meandered in the same direction-- that they were all on the same path, they all had the same dream, they all had to work together to remake the world into the way it should be. Dread never did tell the Dread Youth the way the world had used to be with the green grass and blue skies and starry nights. If the Dread Youth ever had the opportunity to see the world in its natural glory, what would they think then? Would they follow a man's dream of destroying all that was good in the world?

That was an ages-old question, wasn't it?

The construct of the power-hungry madman intent on bending the world to his own warped image repeated throughout history. They would run roughshod over the land, killing the innocents in their wake, and there would be those who followed them regardless of the truth.

The truth...

Project New Order was all about Dread's vision for the future-- mechanizing as many minds as he could, digitizing everyone opposed to him, turning the world into a metal bastardization of what it once was. It was all about his worldview, and humans had no place in it. Jon couldn't imagine a self-loathing that deep or that profound. Yet Taggart had become Lord Dread because of his own perceived inadequacies. He took that belief, made it physical, turned it into a religion and brainwashed his soldiers from the cradle.

Now, a sizeable portion of that army was decimated, their elevation to a perceived mechanical superiority stopped by a mere power interruption. Only one biodread was 'born,' but it could go where Soaron couldn't. It was land based. Dread now truly had eyes in the air and on the land.

If the jumpship had crashed into Volcania, it could have set off an explosion that would have ended a lot of things-- biodreads, Dread's plans, the fortress, the war, their lives...

If it had crashed on the flight home, Jon would have lost Jennifer...

_"Undying_ metalloid bodies," he heard Jennifer's voice echo from the landing bay. Jon remembered he had been sent on a rather important mission to get wire and insulated tubing to help repair the engines. Items in hand, he hurried back to hear more of the conversation.

"I just don't get it," Scout said as he helped Jennifer remove the outer plating of one of the engines. "I mean, even if you'd been told that all your life, wouldn't some of the Dread Youth not want to be machines?"

"Sure, there were a few, but if they ever said anything against it, they'd disappear." She picked up a screwdriver and began to loosen the inner clamps. "You learn very early not to argue or disagree with any of the litanies. That was the way life was, and no one could say a word against it."

Jon placed the wire and tubing on the table in easy reach. He quickly joined Hawk as Tank lowered the second engine onto another worktable. Two engines -- both overheated and damaged -- it was definitely a job for all five of them. Yet they were all working under the very over-protective eye of the ship's pilot. It was her ship. No one even sneezed around it without her knowing so if anyone helped with the repairs, they knew that the one person they had to pass muster with was scrutinizing their work.

"They'd disappear?" Jon asked.

"One day, they'd be in the classes; the next day, they wouldn't," she told them. "Rumors kept the rest of us on our best behavior."

Hawk looked into the engine, not liking what he was seeing. "Or?"

Jennifer glanced at him. "Or we wouldn't get the chance to be immortal minds in undying metalloid bodies."

Scout almost shuddered. "So this new biodread we saw -- there's an actual human mind in there?"

"More than one, most likely," Jennifer told him. "A biodread of that size requires a lot of processing power that can only be found in multiple human minds. The biodread itself would have its own pre-programmed personality and command structure to follow, but it would use the human minds to process data. You can contrast that with a biomech trooper that would only need one mind in order to function properly. These biodreads would be something far more dangerous and powerful if more had been built."

All four men stopped working and listened. They hadn't considered that particular reality of actually placing a human mind in a metalloid body.

"Clickers?" Hawk asked. "There's a human mind inside them?"

Jennifer nodded her head. "Some of them. Dread started experimental transfers into clickers a few years ago. There were a lot of casualties at first because they couldn't get the transfer process to work correctly."

Casualties? That was an odd word to use when talking about clickers and human mind transfers. Again, Jon learned a little more about Jennifer's view of the world when she was younger. Multiple meanings of words took on a new definition. "Is that what Dread teaches when he talks about putting a mind in a metalloid body?"

"It's what he teaches, but I don't think anyone thought he meant... that. I don't think a Dread Youth ever thought that they would no longer be themselves once they transferred."

Tank heard something in her voice, something that quantified the statement. "But you found out that a person loses himself?"

Jennifer stopped working. Staring into the engine, she said, "I had just finished up an assignment with Air Recon, and there was a soldier named Colville who had just earned her youth leader ranking. We were both re-assigned that evening to a newly formed unit. We met on the transport taking us to our new duty stations and compared work histories. The next day, the technicians called for help with an experimental transfer, and she volunteered. I wasn't supposed to be at the lab, but I was curious and followed. I passed by interrogation rooms where people were being questioned. There was one man... anyway, I reached the lab and found a place to hide and watch. When it was over, the personality inside the trooper wasn't the person I'd met. There was only this robot with a greater processing capacity standing there. The technicians and medics reported to their superiors and lied to them. They said that the transfer hadn't been successful, but I was there. I saw them when the transfer took place, and they were thrilled at how well it worked. They kept talking about how they needed more. Then they contacted Dread and told him of their success and that they needed the rest of the members of the advance squad and cleansing unit to transfer. Dread said that they'd just received information and needed the platoon for a couple of assignments but they could have any survivors afterwards. I overheard one of them saying that they wanted to have some sort of protective military force in place before they moved the transfers into a full-scale operation. I never found out exactly what the operation was though. Now, I'm wondering if it's Project New Order."

"When did that happen?" Tank asked her.

"Right before Sand Town ."

That one sentence told them more than anything else could. The truth had hit her twice in a very short amount of time. Lies permeated the Dread Youth. Curiosity had guided her to find out what would happen to the acquaintance, but reality showed her the truth.

In a quick change of subject, her voice sounding somewhat tense, she said, "The entire fuel cell's going to have to be rebuilt on this engine. The shut off valve is practically melted. Did we get those repair parts the last time we were at the Passages?" They recognized the tone of her voice. She didn't want to talk about biodreads or Dread Youth anymore. Subject closed. Nothing to see here. Please pay no attention to the elephant in the room, thank you.

"Supply room," Scout said. "They're still in the crates. Tank, Hawk, give me a hand. We've got to do some heavy lifting to get to them."

 

~*~*~*~*~

 

Hawk and Tank moved a particularly heavy crate aside as Scout rummaged through another box for clamps and valves.

"Did anyone else find that conversation as disturbing as I did?" Scout asked them.

"More," Tank told him. "Dread's turning people into robots and has been for several years."

Hawk shoved the crate back against the wall and sat down. "And Project New Order's been in the works for that long. It sounds like Dread compartmentalized the assignments so no one group knew what the big plan was. And that makes no sense since everyone involved was loyal to Dread."

"Uh, guys," Scout said.

"Unless," Tank interrupted, "Dread had something in mind that he didn't want anyone to know about. Maybe even Overmind."

Hawk stood back up and began to pace. "So to keep it from Overmind, he had to keep it from some of the technicians and scientists."

"Guys," Scout tried again.

"So Dread might be planning something that might not be exactly what Overmind would approve of," Hawk continued.

"Guys!" Scout yelled to get their attention. "Yes, that whole human-mind-into-a-walking-tin-can issue can give you nightmares, but I'm talking about Jennifer. She's told us a lot over the years, but that's the first time she's been that open to us about something that happened when she was in Volcania. She watched someone get turned into a walking can opener, and she was on the short list to have the same thing happen to her. You didn't find that the least bit disturbing?"

"What are you talking about?" Hawk asked. "She didn't say she was--"

"Yes, she did," Tank answered, just realizing exactly what Jennifer had told them. "She said that someone she was assigned with volunteered, and then the rest of the squad was to be used for transfers after their assignments were completed."

Hawk sighed. "And their next assignment was Sand Town," he finished. "I missed that."

"Yeah," Scout picked up a few more items he knew they'd need. "What do you say to something like that?"

"We don't," Hawk told him.

"We don't?" Scout repeated. "How can we not say anything?"

Hawk could only grin. " _We_ don't, Rob. Jon will. He'll have more luck talking to her than any of us."

"Oh?" Scout asked. "Is something more going on during those late night chess games than we first thought?"

That brought a laugh from Hawk. "Other than Jennifer beating him practically every single game? Yeah, a little more is going on. She's opening up more about her past."

Tank picked up the box now full of the parts needed to repair the engines. "She's always told us about her past."

"Yeah, she's told us a lot and she's always answered our questions, but not like this," Hawk explained. Then, he added, "I've overheard part of a conversation or two."

"You've been eavesdropping," Tank stated, amused.

"Just keeping aware of what's going on here at the base like any good soldier," Hawk told him, a complete look of innocence on his face.

"Uh huh," Scout walked over to Hawk, "And keeping up with what's going on with those two?"

"Someone has to. I don't think either one of them has realized what's going on between them yet. They might need a little encouragement from us at some point, so it's best for us to be prepared," Hawk told them. "Anyway, Jennifer's told us the general things that the Dread Youth grow up with. Now, she's able to talk about the details, and some of it is worse than we've imagined, like what she just said."

They were quiet for a moment, each processing the idea that reality was worse than what they'd already been told.

"Leave it to Jon," Hawk told them, "and don't mention anything unless Jennifer brings it up first. Some things are hard enough for her to talk about without us putting any pressure on her."

 

~*~*~*~*~

 

Alone with Jennifer, Jon leaned against the workbench and watched as she concentrated fully on the engine. He admired the way she could focus on the task at hand, even when that task could bring up the bad memories. In this case, it was the mission and the following conversation that brought them back.

The conversation had hit a sore spot for her. She revealed more than she ever had before to the others. She had seen a human mind destroyed in a transfer, and she was scheduled for the same fate within days.

The engine was bearing the brunt of her frustration, and Jon could hear the groan of a few bolts as she removed them one by one.

What could he say about what she'd told them? Jon was truly at a loss for words.

He finally walked over to her worktable, took the wrench from her grasp and placed a hand on her shoulder. "That was some impressive flying you did out there today. Hawk said it was fighting you."

Jennifer glanced up at the jumpship and smiled a little. "No, she wasn't fighting me. She was doing everything she could to keep us in the air with only the afterburners. I could almost feel her trying to find the updrafts."

_She, not it_ , Jon reminded himself. "I think you're the only one she'd do that for."

"She's a good ship," Jennifer said, her focus back on the engine.

Jon was quiet for a moment, then he told her, "If you want to talk--"

"Do you remember when I told you that Dread Youth don't have friends?" she asked quickly.

Jon nodded his head. "I remember."

"They isolate each soldier so there's only duty and obedience to the Machine. You don't do things for others because ... well, you just don't. Those particular dynamics and relationships don't exist. If I had said anything to anyone, warned them, no one would have believed me, and I would have been reported for treason," she said, not looking away from the engine. "I'd have been digitized or shot."

Jon squeezed her shoulder before sitting down on the workbench.

"I know," he confirmed what he already knew. The way she grew up, no friends, no emotional ties to anyone, no trust, what could she have done? No one would have believed the truth. None of them could have. "No immortal minds in undying metalloid bodies," Jon reversed the litany. "After a lifetime of hearing one thing, it'd be nearly impossible to believe the opposite without proof."

"I know."

Jon sensed that there was something else she wanted to talk about. He gently tapped her on the arm and tried to look inquisitive. He didn't know how far to push the questions, so he chose to let her decide what to tell him.

For a moment, Jennifer didn't say anything. It was as if she were looking for the right words. "Everything happened so fast. When the transport landed, Colville and I were immediately shown our quarters and then it was almost time for lights out. Did you know that Dread Youth have no personal belongings other than a spare uniform? Everyone's quarters looked exactly the same. Everything was military issue, but we did all have plaques on the wall that had the litanies on them. In the very center of the wall was the one that read we would one day be immortal minds in undying metalloid bodies." She almost laughed. It was more like a choked sob. "My superior had told me the assignment I was on was very important to Dread, and he hand-picked all of the personnel for this new unit based on our performance and loyalty to the Machine. I was so excited and proud of myself that I didn't get much sleep that night. I kept staring at all the plaques on the wall and thinking I had served the Machine well and this was a reward. Then, that next morning, I saw Colville's mind transferred into a clicker. I couldn't make myself believe that everything I'd ever heard was a lie. I certainly couldn't believe my entire life was a lie. I kept thinking that I had to be wrong, that I didn't see what I thought I saw. Then, my unit was ordered to march to Sand Town within the hour. There is where it all... became clear."

What had Jennifer told him once? _A lot of things happened in the span of a few days that completely changed everything for me._ These events had happened in about twelve hours. He'd had no idea so much that was so bad had happened that quickly. He didn't know what else had happened in that span of a few days, but he sensed that now was not the time to ask. She needed to talk about _that_ moment, _those_ few hours.

Much more of her life made sense to him. He'd once wondered why Jennifer was special, why she was the one to break the training when other overunits and youth leaders saw the same thing but stayed utterly loyal to Dread. The truth was that none of them had seen what she did. Her eyes had been opened to the fact that she'd been lied to before the massacre at Sand Town . She was unique in that respect, as well as many others.

It was another reason why she'd had to escape as soon as she could. If she hadn't found a way to leave, she'd have been transferred into a biomech. Either turned into a biomech or face almost certain death in the wilderness, he couldn't imagine how she felt at that moment knowing how limited her choices were.

And if her mind had been transferred...

He didn't let that thought go any further. He didn't like the idea that this vibrant, independent woman might have been lost forever, trapped in a biomech without a consciousness -- that they would have never met.

"And you risked everything to escape after that," Jon finished for her. "I always knew that took a lot of courage. I didn't realize how much. I had no idea what you were facing."

"I wasn't brave. I didn't warn anyone because no one would have believed me, and I ran for my life because I didn't want to my mind transferred," she told him. "What kind of person doesn't warn others of danger?"

Jon couldn't see it that way, but he had the advantage or the disadvantage of being on the proverbial "outside looking in." "No one else would have seen it as a danger. They'd have seen it as gaining everything they were fighting for. It would have been the ultimate proof of loyalty to the Machine to become one, right?"

He waited for a moment until Jennifer nodded her head. "Leaving the way you did took more courage than you can imagine." Turning her back on absolutely everything she'd known, all she had grown up with because she found out the truth-- she shouldered a heavy burden alone. Jon could see something else in her eyes. There was still some regret. She had escaped a fate worse than death, but what about the rest of her unit? For someone with such a big heart, who wanted to help people, there were a lot of regrets in her past even though she'd had no real choice in what she could do.

Jennifer took the wrench back and started removing the bolts in a much less angry movement, Jon helping where he could. They worked silently for a few moments, then Jon asked, "So, there's more than one mind in that new biodread?"

Jennifer nodded her head, but she didn't look up from her work. "There'd have to be. Given the power being focused on Volcania, it's likely tens of thousands of human minds were being transferred."

Tens of thousands? If that many biodreads were being built... "Are there are that many Dread Youth?"

Then, turning her head to look straight at him, Jennifer said, "Not just Dread Youth. Overmind has legions of minds in its databases. All the people that Soaron has digitized over the years are stored there. Not to mention all the people he's digitized over the last few months. It had the minds ready and available as soon as the biodreads were constructed. To be honest, stopping them from being made saved all those minds from a fate worse than digitization."

In essence, they had destroyed perhaps thousands of people who could have been reintegrated, but some of them, after so many years of being digitized... would they have still been sane? Had they truly saved them from a fate worse than what they were already experiencing?

"Sometimes, I wonder if this war will ever be over," he muttered. "Just when I think Dread can't do anything worse..."  
"We find out he's done something worse," she said.

Jon thought that they maybe they needed a change of subject. "You know, there's an odd sort of irony to this mission," Jon told her. "On the one hand, we did everything we could to save Mentor , a machine, and then on the other we were trying to destroy newly built machines in Volcania."

She put down her tools and leaned against her worktable. "It's ironic, but it's not that simple. Mentor 's not just a machine; he's one of the team." She finally smiled a real smile. "Hawk says Mentor 's a lot like your father. He looks like him; he's got the same manner, personality and speech."

"Dad put a lot of himself into Mentor . He wanted an interface that seemed more human and less like a computer. Sometimes, having him around makes not having my dad here a little less painful. It feels like he's still here."

"And you can talk to him," Jennifer said.

"Yeah."

"A friendly face, "Jennifer mused. "I think now we have a better idea of what Dread was wanting with Jessica Morgan."

"We do?"

"He wanted a more humanistic looking form for the biodread, not the one he got. Jessica was an artist. She would have created that for him."

And there was irony in all its sarcastic form. "He wants a mechanized world but doesn't want to give up everything human."

"He wants both and he can't have them," Jennifer finished for him. "I wonder what Overmind had to say about that."

"Think it'd disagree?"

"Overmind's a machine. It's logical. As long as the biodreads are made to all specifications, it'd probably wonder why Dread would want to make it look any different." She sounded a little more like her old self. "I was talking to Mentor about the project names that Dread chose. If you really want irony, Dread named this one _Project Charon_. Mentor said that Charon was the ferryman who took souls to the underworld. On the one hand, a biodread does that when it digitizes someone, figuratively speaking. It traps them in its own version of hell. On the other, creating biodreads is another step on the road to hell." Jennifer removed the last bolt and removed the outer plate. "If we had crashed into Volcania, that's exactly where we would have sent Dread."

Irony again. Their mission had been fraught with ironic moments and revelations.

Yet, again, his thoughts were more focused on the incredibly complex woman beside him. She came so far in such a short time, faced so much before and after her escape. Jon had never known the threat she was under. Yet despite it all, she had this remarkable resiliency of spirit that never ceased to amaze him. If the jumpship crashed into the fortress, if it had gone down on the flight home, no matter what was gained, losing her was a price Jon wasn't willing to pay.

They both reached for the same tool at the same time, their hands touching. Jon looked up as he handed her the tool. "I'm glad we didn't crash into Volcania," he told her. "I wouldn't want to lose you."

Jennifer looked back at him, her gray eyes looking directly into his blue eyes. They shared a moment. There was a look. Jennifer tried to say something, but she didn't know what to say.

Then, realizing that he may have said too much, Jon quickly changed the subject. He glanced back over his shoulder and pointed toward the jumpship. "So, have you picked out a name for her yet?"

 

The End


End file.
